| What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks. Allen Drury would have been incredulous if gay-baiters hounding his Utah senator had turned out to be gay themselves, but this has been a consistent pattern throughout the 30-year war. Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man, ran the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which as far back as 1980 was putting out fund-raising letters that said, "Our nation's moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians)." (Dolan recanted and endorsed gay rights before he died of AIDS in 1986.) The latest boldface name to marry his same-sex partner in Massachusetts is Arthur Finkelstein, the political operative behind the electoral success of Jesse Helms, a senator so homophobic he voted in the minority of the 97-to-3 reauthorization of the Ryan White act for AIDS funding and treatment in 1995.
But surely the most arresting recent case is James E. West, the powerful Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., whose double life has just been exposed by the local paper, The Spokesman-Review. Mr. West's long, successful political career has been distinguished by his attempts to ban gay men and lesbians from schools and day care centers, to fire gay state employees, to deny City Hall benefits to domestic partners and to stifle AIDS-prevention education. The Spokesman-Review caught him trolling gay Web sites for young men and trying to lure them with gifts and favors. (He has denied accusations of abusing boys when he was a Boy Scout leader some 25 years ago.) Not unlike the Roy Cohn of "Angels in America" - who describes himself as "a heterosexual man" who has sex "with guys" - Mr. West has said he had "relations with adult men" but doesn't "characterize" himself as gay. This is more than hypocrisy - it's pathology. |
A few nights back John Stewart put the question a different way. What is it going to take for us to realize that they are ALL gay?
But seriously... At what point do people wake up and realize that many of the most virulently homophobic men are in fact themselves homosexuals? As a movement I don't suspect it will make much of a difference. For every gay-bashing politician or preacher that's outed there will be 5 more that step into the breach. But at some point, the good people who hold the center of this nation have to stand up and say "enough is enough!" We've come to a point in our history where the arguments used against gay marriage are precisely the same ones that were once used against civil rights. Shouldn't that tell us something?
As with everything else, some of this will be solved with a phenomenon political scientists call "generational replacement." Old people die, and with them goes their prejudices and biases. I don't have a poll to cite, but I suspect that among people 35 and under a vast majority are in favor of equal treatment for all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation. But honestly, we shouldn't have to wait to do what is so obviously right.
Will the outing of right-wingers speed the process along? I doubt it. But hypocrisy should be fought wherever it is found, and my guess is... this isn't the last time we'll be reading about this one.
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